If the Indiana state legislature thinks that abolishing township boards will improve transparency and accountability in township government, they are wrong. It would make things worse. The county council does have oversight now, as does the state board of accounts, so by eliminating township boards the state legislature would actually be removing a level of oversight.

In Monroe County alone: There is simply no way that a seven-member county council will provide the same oversight of the 11 trustees as 33 township board members. If there are problems with what the trustee is doing, less oversight will make it worse, not better. The council already has a lot of work to do, as does the county auditor. Adding increased oversight of township government finances to the existing duties of the auditor and council will make it less likely that abuse will be caught, not more likely.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs to understand how liability works. Her line of questioning directed at Wells-Fargo over the Dakota Access pipeline represents dangerous ignorance. A bank that financed the pipeline should be responsible for a leak in a pipeline they do not operate? Really?

Blaming banks for every downstream result of what people do with money lent to them is an incredibly dangerous precedent. If banks are legally responsible with what people do with the money lent to them, then they will not lend anyone any money at all. There is no logical difference between holding a bank responsible for an oil pipeline leak and holding a bank responsible for drunk drivers who financed the purchase of their cars. What about people who use their cars to commit crimes? Should the bank be liable for that?

♣ – There is no such thing as sex slavery. The fact that term exists is offensive. The correct term is rape slavery. None of these slaves are having “sex.” They are being raped.

♣ – Can we please stop with the idiotic meme that we cannot speak ill of the dead? This one is easy, and I realize I am proving Godwin’s Law here, but Adolf Hitler is dead. Most Nazi war criminals are dead. Should we not condemn the Holocaust? Because that is really stupid.

♣ – Charter schools should not get referendum tax dollars. Voters approved a referendum in 2010 and 2016, they voted for money to go to MCCSC, not another school. (I voted no both times.) For the legislature to vote after the fact and change the distribution that voters approved is simply wrong. Let’s not pull a bait and switch on voters.

If we want to “drain the swamp” in Washington DC, then we cannot elect a President who shamelessly lies for political gain. This means that Pete Buttigieg must not be elected President. Buttigieg showed his character last summer when he lied about the 2018 Indiana Republican Party platform.

Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

There have always been debates within the pro-life movement on how to proceed with abolishing abortion. I was surprised to find out when I became active in the 1990’s that some groups would openly oppose legislation to restrict abortion if it did not explicitly ban all abortion, on the grounds that we should not support legislation that allows for murder. In the state of Indiana, we see this in reverse: Two wings of the pro-life movement are fighting about the immediate abolition of baby-murder.

What prompted this post is that a friend said on Facebook that Indiana Right to Life is “doing everything they can to prevent the abolition of abortion” and that donations to them are used to “lobby against abolishing Roe vs. Wade.” That is an unfair characterization.

I warned in 2016 that the cult mentality surrounding Donald Trump would last deep into his presidency if he was elected, and Republicans would not be permitted to dissent if someone who had been a lifelong New York City liberal pushed policies that most Republicans would oppose if Barack Obama proposed them. Well, it turns out I was right. For far too many in MAGA-world, it is all or nothing.

One popular social media personality recentlyscolded libertarian-leaning Republican Senator Rand Paul for opposing Donald Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency to build a wall on the border. Of course, it is possible to support building a wall while opposing the President moving money around that Congress has not appropriated to build the wall. But that is not enough. Either you support President Trump in his declaration of a “national emergency” or you are an enemy.